Colorado Nurse - August 2022

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4 • Colorado Nurse | August 2022 The Official Publication of the Colorado Nurses Foundation in partnership with the Colorado Nurses Association District and Special Interest Group Reports DNA 20 – West Metro Area Colorado Rockies Health Care Appreciation Nights Raise Funds for Nursing Scholarships Nan Morgan, CNA Secretary Norma Tubman MScN, RN In lieu of a speaker at our May meeting, members joined the May 18 five-hour ANA Live Virtual Nurses Event “You Make A Difference” which celebrated nurses. In the evening, we held our virtual business meeting at which the DNA 20 election results for the Board for 2022-23 were announced. Positions remain unchanged thanks to members in open positions rerunning. The Board is made up of Jean Schroeder, President; Betsy Woolf, Vice-President; Irene Drabek, Secretary; Allison Windes, Treasurer; and Annette Cannon, Kathy Crisler, Susan Moyer and Norma Tubman, Board Members at Large. The Nominating Committee is Rita Beam, Irene Drabek, and Barbara Pedersen. The Board will meet August 17 to plan for 2022-23. Throughout the spring and summer members remained active. Several members donated medical supplies, back packs, clothing, personal items and money to the “We Stand with Ukraine”. Collections were taken to the Arvada West Family Medical Clinic where Ellie Titarenko, APN, and staff sorted and boxed donations and delivered three truck loads to Project Cure for shipment to Ukraine. We hope to have Ellie, who has family in Ukraine, at our September meeting as a speaker. Annette Cannon PhD, MA, RN, MSN, D-ABMDI, participated in two videos that address Overdose Prevention/Education and Fentanyl Overdose Prevention. The videos are geared toward teens but have useful Bent County Correctional and Crowley County Correctional. Now Hiring RNs and LPNs! - FT, PT, and PRN Apply today at jobs.corecivic.com information for adults and parents. The videos can be viewed at www.jeffcoteens.org/ODPreventon and https://www.twelvetalks.com/overdose. Help Annette in her efforts to prevent overdoses and overdose deaths by sharing the links with everyone you know. Susan Moyer MS, RN, CNSPH, presented “Building Bench Strength by Increasing the Number and Scope of RNs Working in Primary Care” at the National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers Annual Conference at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, NV on June 21. She also presented “Future of Nursing: Charting the Path for the Next Decade” at the 2022 Nurse Educator’s Conference in the Rockies in Breckenridge, CO on July 20. Jean Schroeder has been busy reaching out to schools of nursing to share with them the benefits of joining ANA/CNA/DNAs. Some of the schools she talked to included Arapahoe Community College and Platt College. Other schools were able to learn about joining through a Zoom video Jean created and sent to the schools. Since all work and no play is not healthy, on May 13 DNA 20 members Annette Cannon and Susan Moyer joined DNA 16 members to participate in Health Care Appreciation Night at Coors Field to watch a Colorado Rockies game. A good time was had by all as the photo shows. For information on DNA 20 meetings see the CNA website or contact President Jean Schroeder at nursingstrategies@gmail.com. May 13th through the 18th were exciting days for Nurses and Healthcare Professionals with fund raising for the Colorado Nurses Foundation through ticket sales to six Rockies home games. The Rockies expanded the option for purchasing special nursing support tickets as the Rockies took on both Kansas City and the Giants. Each ticket sold through the Healthcare link contributed $2.00 to the Colorado Nurses Foundation for scholarships to be awarded in January 2023. For twenty-five years, Mary Kershner, DNA 16, has been connecting Colorado Nurses Association to a Rockies game close to National Nurses Day (now National Nurses Month). What was once one game under the banner Nurses Night at the Rockies has expanded to include all Healthcare Professionals. If you were one of the lucky 1000 to purchase with the special rate to the Kansas City game May 13th, you received a lovely pair of winter socks with the Rockies emblem and the words “Healthcare Rocks” with your ticket. There was also “On Field” recognition with Mary Kershner, Judith Burke, Christine Schmidt, Annette Cannon and Susan Moyer as shown in the photo. Even though the Rockies only came away with two wins through this home stand, Colorado Nurses Foundation scored over $9,000.00 for scholarships. Applications for scholarships will begin Sept 1, 2022. Thank you to all that attended and cheered for nurses. Hope to see you again next year.
Your Dream Find Job Now! Nursing The Official Publication of the Colorado Nurses Foundation in partnership with the Colorado Nurses Association August 2022 | Colorado Nurse • 5 Re-Growing Our Own Ingrid Johnson DNP, MPP, RN,FAAN President and CEO – Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence I am regularly receiving calls and emails from organizations and individuals concerned with the “great resignation” and how that is creating an added shortage of nurses. It is not unusual for the conversation to lean toward questions such as, “Why aren’t the schools graduating more nurses?” and “Should we lower educational requirements to educate RNs faster?” The answer to the first question is not singular. First, we don’t have enough faculty because, to be very direct, nursing faculty is poorly paid in relation to the rest of our profession. Additionally, even if we did have more faculty available, there would not be enough clinical placement opportunities to move everyone through the clinical education process. The answer to the second question is: “No.” Why? Because patients are getting sicker and living longer. Nursing is a complex professional position and reports from employers is that the new nurses come in with gaps in their knowledge. There is too much to learn to create experts in every area of healthcare, and even a four-year BSN degree seems to be too short to fill in all the gaps as new nurses enter the profession. We are trying to transition nurses into practice successfully with post-licensure nurse residencies and evidence indicates that this is a great way to mitigate that need for experience and successfully onboard newly licensed nurses. There is one population of nurses that we haven’t talked a lot about, and I think we need to do so. What about those experienced nurses who have let their license lapse for personal reasons and are out of the workforce? How many nurses out there would be interested in jumping back into the workforce but have been out for awhile and may need to update their skill set or reactivate their license? Data isn’t strong enough to give us a good view of the numbers of nurses in this group, but we suspect that there are many. It is not easy for experienced nurses to figure out how to best update their knowledge and skill set and over the years, as the state’s nursing workforce center, we have repeatedly been contacted to help identify how a nurse can reactive his or her license or refresh a clinical skillset. There are only limited RN and LPN Refresher Courses. State courses that we are aware of are Red Rocks Community College, UCCS, and THEARI (formerly Colorado Central Area Health Education Center). Recently, THEARI contacted The Center to request that we take over the RN and LPN Refresher Courses. Kris Wenzel was the author of that original course at Colorado Central AHEC and was also a founder of The Center. The transition of these programs, therefore, feel natural. We have agreed and the THEARI RN and LPN Refresher Courses are now under The Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence programming. We are hopeful that among the refresher courses in the state, we will together be able to recruit and regrow our nursing profession from the experienced workforce that is out there in Colorado. Combining the work of our schools and opening the door for easy access to refresher programs for Colorado nurses could serve to build our workforce more quickly while utilizing all our nursing expertise that is not being used in the state. I encourage any nurse considering returning to direct care nursing and hoping to re-enter the workforce to do it. You can access The Center’s course at https://www. cahec.org/rn-and-lpn-refresher-course. This is a 100% online course. If you prefer an in-person option, please look at the programs at UCCS or Red Rocks Community College. Our goal is to make education accessible, and we hope that this is an opportunity to re-grow our nursing workforce. Peer Assistance Investing in Prevention Makes Good Financial Sense Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health You can’t put a dollar value on the losses American families have suffered due to the addiction and overdose crisis. A life lost to overdose is irreplaceable, and the costs to happiness, success, and well-being of those living with addiction are similarly overwhelming and incalculable. Yet, funds are finite, and public health decisions do carry cost implications. When policymakers and community leaders can translate the human benefits of effective treatment and prevention measures into some quantifiable return on that investment, it can be a lever to shift public health policies. Recently in the journal Prevention Science, a group of researchers funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) published an analysis of the costs to North Carolina healthcare payers for hospital charges potentially relating to higher-risk behaviors in patients aged 9-18 (i.e., pre-adolescents and adolescents) in 2012. Charges included care for injuries from violence, accidents, or poisoning; care relating to sexual activity, substance use, or psychiatric disorders; and charges related to suicide or self-inflicted injury. The researchers found that these charges totaled more than $327 million, accounting for more than 10 percent of all hospital-related charges. The higherrisk behaviors associated with these costs are preventable with psychosocial interventions, including family-based prevention programs. Pediatricians and family therapists surveyed in the study supported screening and referral to prevention, but cited possible challenges to reimbursement for these services as well as lack of training and lack of referral networks to/from each other. Pediatricians also cited concerns over patients not following through with referrals, suggesting that having family therapists working in pediatric clinics could help. Peer Assistance continued on page 6 ANNOUNCING .... RN & LPN Refresher Training The Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence is now offering RN & LPN Refresher courses to help you get back in the game. RN RN LPN Virtually Refresher Refresher Refresher Simulated Lite Clinicals These courses are designed to provide previously licensed Nurses with the opportunity to update and enhance their nursing skills & knowledge and build confidence to renew their license and re-enter the workforce. COLORADO CENTER FOR NURSING EXCELLENCE pTransforming H :;:; : ug orkforce Innovation refresher@coloradonursingcenter.org
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Colorado Nurse - August 2022

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